Produced by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
1919
"I don't care a hang about the Middle Classes!" said Lord Buntingford,resting his head on his hand, and slowly drawing a pen over a printedsheet that lay before him. The sheet was headed "Middle Class DefenceLeague," and was an appeal to whom it might concern to join the foundersof the League in an attempt to curb the growing rapacity of theworking-classes. "Why should we be snuffed out without a struggle?" saidthe circular. "We are fewer, no doubt, but we are better educated. Ourhome traditions are infinitely superior. It is on the Middle Classes thatthe greatness of England depends."
"Does it?" thought Lord Buntingford irritably. "I wonder."
He rose and began to pace his library, a shabby comfortable room which heloved. The room however had distinction like its master. The distinctioncame, perhaps, from its few pictures, of no great value, but witnessingto a certain taste and knowledge on the part of the persons, long sincedead, who hung them there; from one or two cases of old Nankin; from itsold books; and from a faded but enchanting piece of tapestry behind thecases of china, which seemed to represent a forest. The tapestry, whichcovered the whole of the end wall of the room, was faded and out ofrepair, but Lord Buntingford, who was a person of artistic sensibilities,was very fond of it, and had never been able to make up his mind to spareit long enough to have it sent to the School of Art Needlework formending. His cousin, Lady Cynthia Welwyn, scolded him periodically forhis negligence in the matter. But after all it was he, and not Cynthia,who had to live in the room. She had something to do with the School, andof course wanted jobs for her workers.
"I hope that good woman's train will be punctual," he thought to himself,presently, as he went to a window and drew up a blind. "Otherwise I shallhave no time to look at her before Helena arrives."
He stood awhile absently surveying the prospect outside. There was firstof all a garden with some pleasant terraces, and flights of stone steps,planned originally in the grand style, but now rather dilapidated andill-kept, suggesting either a general shortage of pelf on the part of theowner—or perhaps mere neglect and indifference.
Beyond the garden stretched a green rim of park, with a gleam of water inthe middle distance which seemed to mean either a river or a pond, manyfine scattered trees, and, girdling the whole, a line of wooded hill.Just such a view as any county—almost—in this beautiful England canproduce. It was one of the first warm days of a belated spring. Afortnight before, park and hills and garden had been deep in snow. NowNature, eager, and one might think ashamed, was rushing at her neglectedwork, determined to set the full spring going in a minimum of hours. Thegrass seemed to be growing, and the trees leafing under the spectator'seyes. There was already a din of cuckoos in the park, and the nestingbirds were busy.
The scene was both familiar and unfamiliar to Lord Buntingford. He hadbeen brought up in it as a child. But he had only inherited the Beechmarkproperty from his uncle just before the war, and during almost the wholeof the war he had been so hard at w